


The Gift of Warmth

by StanShantyPete



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27954839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StanShantyPete/pseuds/StanShantyPete
Summary: How do you help someone who feels terribly inadequate in comparison to their best friend? To no one's surprise, Gray knows the answer.
Relationships: Gray/Robin | Tobin
Kudos: 10





	The Gift of Warmth

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by that conversation Tobin has with Alm towards the end of the game. He's trying his best but he has complicated feelings!!!

After the long march, the Deliverance finally chose to set up camp and break for the day. The heat of Zofia still followed them as they were relatively close to the border but an unfamiliar chill greeted them as they inched closer and closer to Rigel. Gray noticed Tobin was out of sorts and was caught off guard multiple times throughout the day, even when Lukas approached him for his opinion on some battle maneuver. When they finally began to set camp, Tobin slipped away without anyone noticing.

Except for Gray.

He followed him a fair way outside the camp and spotted him sitting quietly on a hill.

“Toby-kins!” he shouted as he approached him from behind. “Whatcha doin’?”

Tobin jolted out of his reverie and saw Gray sauntering up the hill to him. “Oh, uh, I just needed a little time to myself. Everything alright back at camp?”

“Right as rain,” he said as he planted himself next to him.

“Does anyone need me?” he raised his eyebrow in confusion.

“Nope!” Gray proclaimed as he folded his legs into a criss-cross fashion.

“Oh. Okay.” There was a pregnant pause before he asked, “Do you need something from me?”

“Not really,” he yawned. “I got kinda sick of everyone’s yammering and guess who found a nice place for some quiet time,” he ribbed. “So don’t let me take away from yours,” he said before laying himself down into the grassy hill.

“Uh, okay.”

They stayed there in silence for a while, Gray resting his back into a makeshift bed of grass and Tobin sitting quietly in his own thoughts. Gray knew an uncomfortable silence from a mile away but this was for Tobin’s own good. He was going to draw it out of him like a fish to bait. So he waited and watched a lonely cloud crawl across the blue sky.

“Gray,” Tobin said quietly as he looked off into the distance where the sky kissed the land. “Am I a bad person?”

A stray cloud passed over them and covered them in its shadow. The breeze that carried it prickled their skin with its too cold bite. It was quiet.

“I mean, I feel like I just keep bringing up-”

“You shouldn’t beat yourself up over Alm,” he cut him off. “We all get jealous, I mean, hell,” he chewed on his lip looking for the right words. “I did it too. Do. I mean, like I still do, sometimes I mean.”

“I should feel happy for him you know? Like he’s liberated a nation, about to save the world, and then some. But,” he brought his arms around his knees into a hug, “I still feel a little mad about it. A little jealous.”

“Like you got something to prove?”

“Not to him,” Tobin’s eyes lost focus on the horizon.

“But to yourself.”

His face softened. “I wanna keep up with him but I feel like I’ve climbed the top of my mountain, filled in the edges of my map, like I’m done. And he’s,” he held back the venom that would’ve flowed freely if he let his dam break just a little. A dam that he kept up because it wouldn’t be fair to a friend who deserved none of it. “He’s not done yet.” He took a shaky breath, “Am I a bad person for wanting a little more?”

Gray pushed himself up off the ground to scoot himself closer to Tobin and draped his arm around his shoulders. Without looking at him, he whispered, “I don’t think you’re done yet.”

Tobin looked at Gray with hollow, disbelieving eyes. “How do you know that?”

Gray rested his head into the crook of Tobin’s shoulder, letting his weight ease into his best friend’s and become one. “We’re not done, right?”

There was a time when Tobin and Gray went out camping and their chatter and jokes were certain to outlast the fire they kindled between them. Gray wanted to go out and gather more wood in the dark, hatchet at the ready, but Tobin chided him and simply rearranged the logs and shifted the embers around the pit. “It’ll keep burning,” he said at the time, “you just need to get in there and take care of it.”

Gray gently squeezed Tobin’s shoulder.

He exhaled, letting out a breath he didn’t realize was in him. He gingerly rested his head atop Gray’s and muttered, “Yeah, we’re not done.”

As they marched through Zofia and into Rigel, they entertained fantasies of what they’d do after the war beyond the “settle down and never fight risen ever again” dreams that seemed so out of reach. They imagined what meals would be like in cities without famines, who would be in port town taverns without pirates, and what the forest and mountain roads would look like without the spectre of a defending army just out of view. They pledged somewhere along the way to see this new world together and never let the other miss a moment of it.

“Thanks.” Tobin’s voice filled the silence and Gray took note of the warmth where cold once was, the gentleness where an edge was, how someone he knew all too well came back into view. “I just. Thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it Bakagama Tobio,” he let his arm trail down to Tobin’s side and wrap around him.

“I don’t even know where you come up with these,” he rolled his eyes while accepting the hug.

Gray scoffed, “What, you don’t like my pet names?”

“Oh I just love them,” he said sarcastically. “You just have a real way with words.”

“I’m a poet and you don’t even know it,” Gray stuck out his tongue to needle him a little more.

“I should probably talk to Alm, huh?” Tobin conceded. “Get it off my chest.”

He hummed in agreement. “But, he can wait. Let’s just chill out for a bit, he probably has enough heart-to-heart confessions to deal with already.”

Barking out in laughter, “Yeah. I guess. And thanks. You’re the best.”

“I know, I know,” Gray accepted his words oh so graciously. And as the shadow gave way to a ray of warm sunlight, he said in a thankful whisper, “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> I like to imagine that when Tobin finally tells all this to Alm, Alm just starts crying and squeezes Tobin to death and says, "No you're really important! I'm so sorry that I made you feel like this! You're one of my best friends and I love you!" And it's really embarrassing for everyone, especially Tobin who is getting crushed to death but not Gray who was hoping for something like this anyway.
> 
> Graybin 4 ever


End file.
